Lecture given at the National Library in Warsaw about the e-book situation in Sweden.

2. Hallo and thank you for inviting me. I am David
Jonsson and I am here to speak about e-books in
Sweden. I have a background as a library project
leader and I also wrote a report about e-books
for the joint regions and municipalities of
Sweden. I also want to take the opportunity to
thank the very interesting insite to e-books in
Germany from Klaus-Peter.

4. • So, what is there to know about the e-book situation in Sweden? Well practically
enough I was given a series of questions when I was asked to come here, so I
thought we might use them as study questions to make sure we get something out
of me speaking except for the actual sound of my voice. The questions are:
• Where and how do Swedish libraries buy e-books?
• Is there a common platform for libraries to buy e-books?
• How are legal problems solved, especially concerning copy right?
• How do you loan e-books in Sweden?
• For how long are e-books loaned in Sweden?
• Are e-books bought for a limited period of time?
• How do you make sure that one book isn´t loaned by two patrons at the same
time, or is it possible for several patrons to loan the same e-book simultaneously?
• Are authors reimbursed when their books are lent out?
• So if you didn´t have time to write all those questions down, you could focus on
one or two questions that you find particularly interesting.

6. The next picture is a view of what topics I will be speaking
about in order to answer these questions. As you can see
I already started with the first ones and then I will try to
explain what business model we use for e-books in
Sweden. We have some interesting reports that have
been written the last couple of years, that surely will
affect the Swedish e-book development and I will take
some time to explain how e-books started in Sweden.
Even though there are many advantages with the Swedish
e-book model there are heaps of interesting problems.
Finally I will try to give you some practical examples in the
sections that I call "Movers and Shakers" and "The
Curves".

8. • In Sweden we have something called the Access model.
It is very unique and is based on libraries only paying
for what they loan to patrons. Being able to offer the
title is for free. Every time an e-book is lent the library
pay a fee of €2 to Elib. Elib is an e-book distributor
owned by the four biggest publishers in Sweden.
• Elib keeps half of the fee and the publisher get the
other half. Depending on agreement between author
and publisher the author usually gets between 10-20%
of what the library pays.
• As with license models publishers decide when and if
the e-books should be accessible to the libraries.

10. • Many organizations in Sweden recognize the importance of e-books, and it is often fairly easy to get
funding for e-book projects. Unfortunately it is fairly difficult to get funding for e-book projects that
have a practical focus. This, and other factors, gives us a multitude of reports.
• What they all have got in common is that they indicate that the reading ability in Sweden is
declining, and it's most significant concerning reading of longer text in the group young males.
There are many different theories about what the cause might be. One possible factor might be
that there are mostly female staff working in schools and libraries, another could be that computer
games are mostly targeted at boys. Some argue that the new school system implemented by the
current government have caused a general decline in reading skills. It is designed to allow individual
choice. Ideas about how to choose spread in social layers. I.e. educated parents choose better
schools for their kids. This mechanism creates segregation and homogeneous groups.
Homogeneous groups learn slower. Facebook and twitter seem to be explanations as to why
younger readers prefer short texts and almost never read longer texts by own will.
• The report with the greatest impact (and size) is The Literature Investigation. It has a size of a
whopping 627 pages but covers much more about reading than e-books. The pages that do cover e-
books explain that e-books really are an important part of future library activities. Some of the
figures presented in the report suggest that men read more e-books than women and that e-book
reading starts to be poplar from the middle of the teen ages. It seems that working with e-books
might be a good way to engage boys in reading activities.

12. Sweden was one of the first countries to start
lending e-books to patrons. The price paid by
the library for a loan was set by the average cost
of buying, storing and treating a printed book
divided by the average number of loans. The
loans were distributed to computers via the
internet by Elib that was formed by the biggest
publishers in Sweden. The number of e-books
that existed in the whole world was pretty low
and everybody was happy for ten years.

14. The problem is that things that move on the internet grow along the 80/20
curve, more famously known as "the long tail". You might also call it a ketchup
effect. The average of a ketchup effect says nothing. So after ten years an E-
book like "I am Zlatan" may totally ruin the budget of any Swedish library. "I
am Zlatan" is a wonderful book, because it is about soccer. It is about one of
the most famous soccer players in the entire world and he is Swedish. That
made it not only acceptable but cool to read for young men. Heaps and loads
of boys that would never had consider reading even things on twitter started
to read for hours and hours, enjoying every minute of it. This and other e-
books made a very valuable contribution to the libraries activity, but suddenly
20 kroners where a very hefty price and the costs when ballistic. Cultural
departments of municipalities all over Sweden were adding extra money to
their libraries budgets and nothing was enough. Besides, do you want to
spend very much money on lending to households that already have enough
money to by an iPad? Shouldn’t that money be spent on media that also
could be used by those who are poor?

15. Photo - Bryce
Edwards

16. The answer comes from Flynn. He discovered that IQ-
tests steadily become just a little bit harder for every year.
It is as if every generation increases it´s IQ by three
points. This gives the question if people were stupid or
even mentally challenged 30 generations ago, or if people
will be geniuses 30 generations into the future. Maybe
we are rapidly evolving to a new species? The answer is
that it is the access to new knowledge, methods, theories
and yes, technology that is increasing. So not working
with e-books would contribute to decreasing the three IQ
points that the next generation has the right to be
smarter than ourselves.

18. • Another problem that the Swedish e-book system, and I would
argue all e-book systems, have is that it is ugly. We spend millions
and millions on building beautiful library spaces, yet we settle for
this view when it comes to e-books. This view is also problematic
because it is based on the best seller list. Yes we want access to the
best seller list in order to attract the target groups we want to
reach, but we don’t want to have best sellers as our main activity.
The top list also creates unwanted competition with the
commercial book retailers. The library is not a book shop only the
books are for free. We want to work with a collection and we want
to work with a selection.
• Bad user experience is also a democratic problem. If it takes me,
personally, 30 minutes to download and start reading the first e-
book on a new iPad, imagine 82 year old Arthur trying to get it
right. Bad UX is excluding and it is not what libraries are about.

20. • Many of the clicks needed are because you have to use
external reading apps to actually read the book, once
you have it downloaded. Using reading apps like Blue
Reader or Adobe Digital Editions creates much worse
democracy problem. It means in theory that they can
track what, how fast, when and where you are reading.
This doesn´t sound like a company, it sounds like
certain governments from a gloomy past. What printed
book you loan is a well preserved secret that many
librarians would protect with their own bodies if they
had to (think of the riots in Middle East). What e-book
you lend is a secret that seem to have been forgotten.

22. • In Sweden we also have a monopoly on the distributer side. Elib is the only
distributor and even though it was formed by the biggest publishers it still creates
an unwanted power concentration. At the same time 85% of the e-books are sold
to libraries. This means that the library prices more or less are the e-book market
in Sweden. On one side you have a powerful publisher consortium (Elib) that
totally refuses the libraries to loan certain best sellers. On the other side you have
regional libraries refuses to buy e-books all together. The situation is starting to get
better with the new Atingo distributor that uses a business model that I will get
back to. Both Elib and Atingo still have a very limited number of e-books.
• Because of this limited number they take in any title that is submitted a copy right
owner in the Nordic countries. This means not only books are in the catalogue but
annual reports of organizations and random leaflets. It is also common that books
with short stories are catalogued as every chapter being an own book so that
every chapter could generate the two euros. There are also examples of titles
available for two euros that could be found for free elsewhere. Almost 20% of the
available e-books are irrelevant in these ways.

24. There are many different things going on today
in the e-book field. Many of them concern
business models and copy right holders.
Surprisingly few concern authors. Several
libraries are active in different ways, including
Malmö Public Library.

26. At Malmö public library there is a project called Kaliber that is going to be an
app for lent e-books that will solve many of the problems mentioned earlier.
It will not be based on a top list view but rather on a selection curated by
local librarians. This way the app will blend in with other activities that the
library might have, I.E. a story telling week or a focus day on German authors.
Kaliber is going to be visually pleasing and easy to use. This will allow it to be
inclusive with target groups like elders or children. Through the use of a
vendor ID it is going to keep who is lending a secret (what is lent will still be
visible to external parties). The only downside is the funding, which is still
something of a challenge. Hopefully there will be a functioning product not
too far into the future. The main functions of this app will be the possibility
to search (which is the current way to find e-books) and to discover (in the
same way you look around shelves in a library, however two-dimensional and
without the actual shelves, much more similar to book browsing). The third
function is that you will be able to read the book without leaving the app, and
without other credentials than your library card.

28. • Stockholm public library have several interesting projects
going on. The platform project is similar to Kaliber but has
more focus on integrating e-book and printed book
catalogues. If a book exists as a sound file, e-book, printed
book and inscription on the door it all turns up on the same
search view. This service is also responsive which means
that you may use any screen size and device to access it.
• Another thing interesting with Stockholm municipal library
is that it inherited the rights to all books by Nobel Prize
winners Per and Alva Myrdal. These books have been vastly
popular ever since they were made available.
• Stockholm also has an initiative with an interesting business
model that they have negotiated with one of the
alternative publishing houses in Sweden, Ordfront.

30. • It is called dual licensing and allow Stockholm
municipal library to scan material that has
passed peak sales, so called backlist. The
library scans the book and then is free to lend
it at the same time as the publisher sell the
same book to consumers.

32. • The National Library has good credibility,
competence and generally a good position to
develop the use of e-books in Sweden.
Unfortunately it’s underfunded. The cultural
minister gave two million kroners to integrate
free e-books into their catalogue. What they
really should have is ten million kroners to
make this:

34. The idea is called Libris XL and would overbridge
and fit into all other e-book initiatives I have
mentioned in this presentation. In the long run
it would also result in a national library card that
would work on more or less all libraries in
Sweden. There is still much to be done, but most
ideas and concepts necessary to make this come
true are already thought of by the National
Library or other operators in the realm of e-
books.

36. • Sveriges Kommuner och Landsting (SKL) is the
Swedish cooperation organization for regions and
municipalities. They have assumed the role of
negotiating e-book agreements on behalf of
Swedish public libraries. The agreements that SKL
develop are ment to function as templates and
recommendations about what is reasonable to
agree upon. SKL also grants legal help and advice
when the libraries experiments with new
solutions and creates new services.

38. The Götabiblioteken and the county library of Örebro are two
interesting groups of libraries since they discontinued their contracts
with Elib in protest against the low number of e-books available, the
high cost and other absurdities that occur with the e-lending. The
absurdities come from limitations from publishers and also limitations
that libraries have to invent for themselves to keep budget. If one
compare with printed books it is easy to see the absurd. That patrons
would have to settle for two loans a week would seem absurd, that the
library should close down in the middle of every month for a week or
two would seem absurd, that publishers would come to the library to
take down and carry away books as they see fit would seem absurd,
but only if it was regarding printed books. When it comes to e-books in
Swedish libraries this is a reality that we have been living with for
many years. To, as in other countries, loan copies that “ware out” to
patrons that have to stand in a “lending queue” to loan popular titles,
is also unreasonable.

40. One of the libraries in Götabiblioteken is the public library
of Norrköping. In Norrköping they have experimented
with acting as a publisher for local talents that otherwise
would not reach an audience of readers. At the yearly
recurring culture festival Kulturnatten they invited
everybody who wanted to submit scripts for e-books. The
staff then made a selection and the best five were
selected. The e-books were published with the distributor
Smashwords. A big advantage with Smashwords is that
they make the books available through all the big book
shops such as, iBookstore, Kindle, Kobo etc. Also, as long
as you don’t charge money, they don’t charge money.

42. Atingo is a new E-book distributor that is on its way to
establish itself with a new business model that is based
on that publishers may suggest any price they want to,
and then libraries may accept the price or choose not to
offer the book to its patrons. The libraries can set a cost
limit, and the publishers may alter the price at any time.
The most probable price change is to make the title
cheaper when the sales peak has passed. Jönköping
public library is the first library to try this new model.
Elib counters with a business model that schematically
looks like this:

43. Photo: Ranata F. Oliveira

44. They continue with the access model and add a
license model and also a subscription model.
They also hint a coming fourth model, and let’s
not forget the class sets of e-book licenses they
offer to schools. Their own picture of what will
happen looks like this:

46. • It seems clear enough, but it never the less illustrates a foreseeable
problem: Pretty soon after the monopoly has ended we will see a
situation where there will be too many suppliers of e-books, or
rather there will be too many factors and models to keep track of.
This will be especially problematic in small libraries where there is
no possibility to specialize in e-book purchase.
• At the same time it is important to use still another kind of
distributor, namely thouse that distribute free e-books. There is e-
book literature that is both for free and highly relevant. The two big
suppliers of this are Project Runeberg and Litteraturbanken. They
have the classics that are not protected by copy right and therefore
will not use up the budget. Also, if a library would be given the
rights to lend an e-book directly from an author, the readiness for
being able to use that gift is very low. Most libraries could be much
better at lending out free e-books.

48. Finally I have some statistics that show what I
have been talking about.

50. This is the Flynn effect in some European
countries. The differences are pretty
uninteresting here. The interesting part is the
tendency and which way we are going.

52. This is the normal gloomy picture we’ve all seen
that little by little the lending of printed books is
declining. Most library related graphs in most
countries look like this.

54. This slide shows the access to e-book readers
like Kindle and/or tablets like iPad. As you can
see the age groups that have access to these
devices are very interesting. The graph also
shows that the male population has more access
than the female.

56. Here is the Zlatan effect. This is the proof of the
potential of e-books and the reason it is so
difficult to deal with.

58. On these pictures you can see that the
percentage of e-books is almost not visible
because it is so small. But if you zoom in on that
little “stain” on the floor…

60. On these pictures you can see that the
percentage of e-books is almost not visible
because it is so small. But if you zoom in on that
little “stain” on the floor…

64. …then you will see that the direction the
direction that the “stain” is taking is so sharp
that you cannot ignore it. The e-book is a
formidable tool for libraries to improve
democracy and to make the next generation so
much smarter than ourselves that they deserve
to be.